The Sea Keeps What Is Hers

By Sanjana Shome

I am the one who walks the silver road,

who coaxes tides, who remembers the oath.

They mutter "Witch" in their harbors—a word I outgrew.

I am the thread that time somehow dropped.

Long ago, the raw world made a pact with me:

the sea would stay sea, the land stay free.

And if that line was ever crossed,

the waves would heave, the stars go lost.

But I watched, quiet, from a sky of bone,

as two young hearts dared what shouldn't be done.

A girl all scaled in oyster-gleam,

a boy of sun-heat and grass-dream.

They found the place where wet sand glistens,

and kissed beneath the moon's last listening.

They breathed their love, a mortal sound—

a living vow, to be gently drowned.

Fools, I thought. My old heart went cold.

You can't just bind what won't be held. Love isn't a key to break a seal;

it's the reason the seal was made of steel.

So I spoke. The deep water moved.

"By the turning world, you will be reproved—

one of sea-foam, one of dust,

forever near, but never to trust."

When her foot finds the stubborn ground,

he'll feel the ache, a drowning sound.

The sea will want him, bone and blood,

and pull him down to the shifting mud.

And when he wades from the surf's white lace,

hoping just to see her face—

her breath will catch, her form unbind,

a silver slip back to the mindless brine.

So they turn, year on endless year,

wound in salt and a silent tear.

Call it a curse if it makes it plain.

I call it balance, and its patient pain.

So sing their story, if you must.

But remember the sea keeps what she can touch.

And I, the moon—pale, alone—

will hold this line of sand and stone.

Mark these words in your own breath, your own bone:

the sea keeps what is hers, and hers alone.

By Sanjana Shome